Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
I got out to do a walk with my family this morning and we were lucky not to get wet. It has been raining on and off since about 30 minutes after we got home. I was hoping to take my mom out to see the Christmas lights around a nearby lake but she won’t walk in the rain. I’m used to it now but my mom thinks we are crazy to choose to walk in the rain.
I get it, she grew up in the Caribbean, and if it rained you just waited it out for 10 minutes while the cloud went by. But that won’t work living in Vancouver, on the edge of a rainforest.
Today while scrolling on social media I saw a clip that said, “Things to do in Canada during the winter.” Then the clip changed to a closeup of a person pulling a suitcase in an airport and the caption read, “Leave”. 😝
I ran a few errands in the rain, it isn’t a big deal, but I have to say that I am already looking forward to winter being over. I don’t think my wife would ever want to leave Canada, and I get it… this is a great place to live. However I have to admit that the rain does get to me a bit, and I yearn for sunshine.
But I’ll just keep taking my Vitamin D, using my daylight light, and dreaming of sunnier days. And yes, I’ll still get outside even if it’s raining.
Last year I overcooked the turkey. This year I baked the biggest bird I’ve ever cooked, weighing in at 25.8lbs, and it was cooked to perfection. All the food was delicious.
But more than the food, the company was great. Any time that we can bring family together for a meal is wonderful.
I started writing this in my head just over 7 years ago, in August 2017. We were all in Victoria, and had just finished moving Cassie into her tiny, very green, residence room for first year university.
I was sitting on her bed. As we chatted I thought about what a milestone this was… one of our babies was leaving the nest. I felt overly sentimental, and started thinking about all the ideas below. Over the years I’ve thought of different ways of saying this, always feeling like I’m not doing the ideas justice.
Today I decided that since you are already 25 and almost 23, I need to get these thoughts out. I’ve put off sharing this for too long. So here goes…
~~~~~
Firsts and Lasts
Dear Cassie & Katie,
I remember.
I remember the moment in the hospital when I first laid eyes on you; the first time I held you, and kissed your cheek. I remember your first smile, (that wasn’t just passing gas), your first laugh, and the first time you said, ‘Da-da’. I remember your first steps. There were so many firsts in those early days and, although they slowed, they still kept coming. From your first tooth to your first tooth falling out. From your first day at daycare to your first day at school. And from your first birthday to your last one as a teenager.
And so it is that I remember many firsts, but unfortunately I don’t remember too many lasts.
I don’t remember the last time you fell asleep on my chest or came running towards me and jumped unabashedly into my arms for a big hug. I don’t remember the last time we were walking together and you reached up to hold my hand. I don’t remember the last time I did a push up with you on my back, or the last time you danced on my feet, or the last time I gave you a piggyback.
And such is life that as we grow up together, parent and child, we carry with us these moments, momentous ‘first’ occasions, but we never know what other forgotten momentsdisappear as we get older. We remember the firsts, not the lasts. We savour the memories of so many special occasions, and we lament those things that we take for granted only after they no longer happen.
I won’t ever forget our Christmases in China and Spain. I will never remember the last story I read to you while you sat in my lap. Firsts… and lasts: Lifetime memories and forever forgotten interactions that fade away secretly. Photographs and movies that play in my mind as well as on film, photo paper, and digital jpg’s stay with me, like first school concerts, and graduations.
Meanwhile I’ll never remember the last time I fed you porridge, or tricked you into eating healthy baby food by burying it under a layer of desert on the spoon. The fact that I can recall this interaction tells me the memories still resonate. Sure, it may not have been the last time, but I remember feeding you in your high chairs. I also remember the frustration of you trying to feed yourself. Sometimes it was your frustration because it was too much work, sometimes our parental frustration because feeding yourself took so long. But we wanted to give you your independence, and so we let you do it even when it would have been easier to just keep feeding you… and then you just didn’t need us to feed you anymore. It just happens… and after it happened one last time that time was not remembered.
It sounds a bit sad, and in a way it is, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I’ve watched my two girls blossom into wonderful young women. I see you as adults that I don’t just love, but love being around. I’ve seen you both develop amazing work ethics, and carry with you a kindness to others that I want to see more of in the world. These things do not happen without forgotten lasts along the way.
And now as you head into adulthood I look forward to many more firsts. You might not dance on my feet anymore but I look forward to my first father daughter dance at your weddings. You might not fall asleep in my arms, but I look forward to being a grandparent and having your kids remind me of that wonderful feeling.
Along the way there will also be more lasts, and while I know they will come too, I will only think of them afterwards, unable to recall when such moments came to an end. Such is life. And so as I look to the future, I can’t wait for more first, and yes, more lasts too. Moments to cherish, milestones to achieve, adventures to experience. Your mom and I are excited to see what our amazing girls do next. We cherish you, your firsts, and your lasts.
It’s Christmas Eve and I had some of the best parking and lineup karma I’ve ever had. Five stops and in every case the hunt for a rare open parking stall was almost instantaneous. The stores were busy but in the 3 places that we purchased items, we never waited for more than a couple people in front of us.
The lineup karma didn’t seem to be working at one location where we stepped into a very long line. Then we heard an employee, “Lanr 7 is open, lane 9, lane 3… he just kept going and we basically didn’t pause, moving constantly forward until we were in a lane with a person getting their last 3 items scanned. This was the same lineup we couldn’t get past to walk in the store, that didn’t seem to be moving at all, which made us question if we even wanted to bother shopping at this busy grocery store.
I’m back home and Spanish rice is in the oven. Next is my grandmother’s dish-baked stuffing that doesn’t get stuffed in the turkey. That’s two items that will only need reheating tomorrow, giving me time for all the other cooking to be done on feast day.
Seems the biggest lineup I’ll have to wait for all day is for space in the oven:)
Wishing all happy holidays… as well as good parking & lineup karma!
We spent a good part of the day shopping for ingredients for some food I remember from my childhood… a simple but delicious turkey stuffing (that doesn’t go in the turkey) and a Caribbean special, Peas and Rice.
And on that note, if anyone knows of a grocery store in Coquitlam that sells pigeon peas, please let me know, we are still on the hunt.
I see both promise and doom in the near future. Current advances in technology are incredible, and we will see amazing new insights and discoveries in the coming years. I’m excited to see what problems AI will solve. I’m thrilled about what’s happening to preserve not just life, but healthy life, as I approach my older years. I look forward to a world where many issues like hunger and disease have ever-improving positive outcomes. And yet, I’m scared.
We are already playing with technology that has the potential to “put humans, animals and plants at risk of lethal infections.” What scares me most is the word I chose to start that sentence with, ‘We’. The proverbial ‘we’ right now are top scientists. But a decade, maybe two decades from now that ‘we’ could include an angry, disenfranchised, and disillusioned 22 year old… using an uncensored AI to intentionally develop (or rather synthetically design) a bacteria or a virus that could spread faster than any plague that humans have ever faced. Not a top researcher, not a university trained scientist, a regular ‘Joe’ who has decided at a young age that the world isn’t giving him what he deserves and decides to be vengeful on an epic scale.
The same thing that excites me about technological advancement also scares me… and it’s the power of individuals to impact our future. We all know the names of some great thinkers: Galileo, Newton, Curie, Tesla, and Einstein as incredible scientists that transformed the way we think of the world. People like them are rare, and have had lasting influence on the way we think of the world. For every one of them there are millions, maybe billions of bright thinkers for whom we know nothing.
I don’t fear the famous scientist, I fear the rogue, unhappy misfit who uses incredible technological advancements for nefarious reasons. The same technology that can make our lives easier, and create tremendous good in the world, can also be used with bad intentions. But there are differences between someone using a revolver for bad reasons and someone using a nuclear bomb for bad reasons. The problem we face in the future is that access to the equivalent harm of a nuclear bomb (or worse) will be something more and more people have access to. I don’t think this is something we can stop, and so as amazing as the technology is that we see today, my fear is that it could also be what leads to our demise as a species.
The semester is over and the holidays have begun. Got my walk in with my buddy this morning and then came home and slept for almost 3 hours. I don’t usually take 3 hour naps, but I guess my body needed it. I’m just glad I didn’t have a full crash and get sick, which often happens this time of year.
But I’m older and a bit wiser. I didn’t let my almost 60 hour work week stop me from my healthy living routines. I didn’t skip meals because I was too busy. I didn’t miss taking my vitamins. And I still talked regularly to friends. So many times in the past I would get busy and just drop my positive routines.
That said, rest is also an important routine and while long naps are not part of my routine, letting myself crash for a bit and recover today has me feeling great as I begin the holidays.
I find it mind boggling that just 5 years ago the big AI debate was whether we would let AI out in the wild or not? The idea was, AI would be sort of ‘boxed’ and within our ability to ‘contain’… but we have somehow decided to just bypass this question and set AI free.
Here is a trifecta of things that tell me the cat is out of the bag.
NVIDIA puts out the Jetson Orin Nano. A tiny AI that doesn’t need to be connected to the cloud.
Robots like Optimus from Tesla are already being sold.
AI’s are proving that they can self replicate.
That’s it. That’s all. Just extrapolate what you want to from these three ‘independent’ developments. Put them together, stir in 5 years of technological advancement. Add a good dose of open source access and think about what’s possible… and beyond possible to contain.
Yesterday over 70 former grads came to visit our little school that only had its first official graduation 8 years ago. We originally thought about half that many would be able to join us.
I can’t express how wonderful it was to connect with former students, to see what they are up to now, and to have an opportunity to chat with them. Two students from our first grad are now married and brought their baby. Several more are married or engaged. Many are still in school. Some are working for big companies, some following their artistic passions, and of course a few are still finding their way in the world.
It was a a very special event and it made me appreciate what a wonderful community we have created. I couldn’t be luckier, being able to stay at Inquiry Hub since its inception in 2012.
I’ve been following a little adventure to the Antarctic on social media. A group of flat earthers were gifted a chance to go to the Antarctic and have now seen a full 24 hours of sun, recording it and live-streaming to loyal flat earth believers. The only problem is that 24 hours of sun is impossible on a flat earth.
Here are a couple TikToks that share them talking to their flat earth fans on livestream.
The humour here is that these diehard believers with hundreds of thousands of followers are now being called shills, and being accused of faking what they are seeing, because even in the face of hard evidence, their fans want to hold on to their (invalid) beliefs.
You would hope that this would be enough to change minds, but people don’t change beliefs easily. I’m looking forward to seeing what kinds of ridicule these flat earthers will face from their fans. I wonder if any of them will continue to defend this ridiculous idea when they get back home?
My hope is that common sense will prevail… we’ll see.
